Network Interface Lights

[Mighty]

Hi Folks,

Just looked at several laptops and desktops on my network to examine the lights on the ethernet connection. Quite a few of the ones I checked have a red light and an orange light - no green one.

All the PC's in question are still working on the network. What causes those lights to be ref - would it be over capacity on the network?

Mighty

 

[kmcferrin]

I've never seen red lights on a NIC before, but anything is possible.

NICs typically have two lights, one showing the link status (connected/not connected), and the other showing traffic.

The link status light can work several different ways. On some NICs they will be green/amber, green generally means that it is connected, or connected at full speed and duplex. Amber can mean disconnected, connected at less than full speed/duplex, or negotiating the connection. Sometimes the "not connected" state is shown by no link light.

The traffic light is usually green and flashes as packets move across the interface.

Red is the universal color for errors in the IT world, but I've never heard of a red NIC light. It could be that everything is fine and that the manufacturer just used a different color light for one of the usual lights. You could always look it up on their web site and see.

 

[Sympology]

Red is the universal color for errors in the IT world

I hope not ! I'm sitting here looking at our computer room and can see about 50 - 100 red LED's....

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[Mighty]

I don't think the manufacturer uses a different colour LED. The majority of the machines on my network are Dell. Some have green LED's but quite a large proportion have a red LED. The other one is orange.

Network performance does appear slow.

Mighty